dub package manager

Introduction

DUB emerged as a more general replacement for vibe.d's package manager. It does not imply a dependency to vibe.d for packages and was extended to not only directly build projects, but also to generate project files (currently VisualD).
Mono-D also supports the use of dub.json (dub's package description) as the project file.

The project's philosophy is to keep things as simple as possible. All that is needed to make a project a dub package is to write a short dub.json file and put the source code into a source subfolder. It can then be registered on the public package registry to be made available for everyone. Any dependencies specified in dub.json are automatically downloaded and made available to the project during the build process.

Key features

Simple package and build description not getting in your way

Integrated with Git, avoiding maintenance tasks such as incrementing version numbers or uploading new project releases

Generates VisualD project/solution files, integrated into MonoD

Support for DMD, GDC and LDC (common DMD flags are translated automatically)

Supports development workflows by optionally using local directories as a package source

Future direction

To make things as flexible as they need to be for certain projects, it is planned to gradually add more options to the package file format and eventually to add the possibility to specify an external build tool along with the path of it's output files. The idea is that DUB provides a convenient build management that suffices for 99% of projects, but is also usable as a bare package manager that doesn't get in your way if needed.

Installation

DUB comes precompiled for Windows, OS X and Linux. It needs to have libcurl with SSL support installed (except on Windows).

The dub executable then just needs to be accessible from PATH and can be invoked from the root folder of any DUB enabled project to build and run it.

If you want to build for yourself, just install DMD and libcurl development headers and run ./build.sh. On Windows you can simply run build.cmd without installing anything besides DMD.

Debian/Ubuntu Linux

Jordi Sayol maintains a DEB package as part of his D APT repository. Run sudo apt-get install dub to install.

OS X

Chris Molozian has added DUB to Homebrew. Use brew install dub to install the stable version, optionally adding --HEAD/--devel to install the latest git master or development release respectively.

There is also a MacPorts package available. Type sudo port install dub to install the latest stable version.

Windows

Daniel Jost maintains a dub package on chocolatey. Use cinst dub or cinst dub -version #.#.# to install stable or a custom version respectively.

Using DUB as a library

The DUB package of DUB can be used as a library to load or manipulate packages, or to resemble any functionality of the command line tool. The former task can be achieved by using the Package class. For examples on how to replicate the command line functionality, see commandline.d.